Fishing: Standards & rights at work

Strategic objective: Promote and realize standards and fundamental rights and principles at work

Child Labour

The ILO’s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) was created in 1992 with the overall goal of the progressive elimination of child labour, which was to be achieved through strengthening the capacity of countries to deal with the problem and promoting a worldwide movement to combat child labour.

Child labour and fishing

Child labour is work that harms a child's well-being and hinders his or her education, development and future livelihood. It is work which, by the nature or circumstances under which it is carried out, harms and abuses, and exploits the child and deprives the child of an education.

The Work in Fishing Convention, 2007 (No. 188) addresses minimum age of fishers in Article 9.  These provisions are consistent with the ILO’s Worst Forms of Child Labour, 1999 (No. 182) and Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138).

A study on child labour was commissioned by the ILO's Bureau for Employers' Activities (ACT/EMP) in collaboration with the Federation of Uganda Employers (FUE) and National Union of Trade Unions (NOTU). The study is part of a bipartite initiative aimed at tackling child labour in the inland fisheries sector in Uganda.

Additional resources

• IPEC website